


crime wave

by formerlydf



Category: Ocean's 8 (2018), Ocean's Eleven Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Gen, Pre-Canon, Siblings, Slice of Life, Yuletide Treat, background Debbie/Lou, background Tess/Danny/Rusty/Isabel in various permutations, older siblings: always making life difficult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28274109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formerlydf/pseuds/formerlydf
Summary: It’s 2008 and Debbie is stuck in fucking Passaic County, New Jersey because her overdramatic schmuck of a brother decided to do something stupidly attention-getting involving federal agents and people who hold grudges. Again. Which means that Debbie, like everyone else who has a connection to Danny in the eyes of both the law and the criminal underworld, has to lay low. Again.“I hate you so much,” she says, one burner phone to another. “I hope you know that.”
Relationships: Danny Ocean & Debbie Ocean
Comments: 19
Kudos: 118
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	crime wave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [olympvs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olympvs/gifts).



It’s 2008 and Debbie is stuck in fucking Passaic County, New Jersey because her overdramatic schmuck of a brother decided to do something stupidly attention-getting involving federal agents and people who hold grudges. Again. Which means that Debbie, like everyone else who has a connection to Danny in the eyes of both the law and the criminal underworld, has to lay low. Again.

“I hate you so much,” she says, one burner phone to another. “I hope you know that.”

“Aww, sis,” he says. She can hear the grin stretching out his words, can imagine the familiar lines at the corners of his eyes. Danny’s always been at his most charming when someone’s angry with him. “I love you too.”

“Casino owners? Really? Mrs. Dubenich was right back in third grade, you really never learn.”

“Now that’s just hurtful,” he says. “Turn in a few lousy book reports and you never hear the end of it.”

“They were about fake books.”

“It was a lot of effort, making up those fake books,” he says, like he thinks it’s a winning point. “I should’ve gotten extra credit.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s that childhood trauma that drove you to a life of crime,” she says, dry, and feels her lips reluctantly twitch at the peals of his laughter. “Seriously, could you quit it with the high-flying stunts for a bit? Knock over a gas station or something instead? I’m going to murder a senior citizen if I see another bingo card in the next twenty-four hours.”

“A gas station? Please,” he says. “Who do you even think I am?”

“I think you’re a dead man walking, is what I think,” she says. “Did you miss the part about _bingo halls_?”

“It’s good to meet new people,” says Danny with the blitheness of a man who’s several countries too far away to get kicked in the balls by his younger sister. “Hey, are you with Lou? Tell her I say hi.” 

Things with Lou are a little strained right now — not anything that impedes their work or their easy knowledge of each other, the way Debbie can tell her as much with a look as with a two-page letter, but they’re both edgy, stuck. They just barely got out of the Scholz job two years ago before it went down in flames, and for the last seven months they’ve been sullenly small-scale. Lou hates feeling constrained, and Debbie — Debbie was built to work bigger than this.

They’re bored, both of them, and the longer it goes on the more painfully Debbie can feel it sawing through her patience.

She says, “Are you with Tess? Tell her I said she’s too good for you.”

“Oh, she knows,” he says. “Rusty tells her about every other day.”

Debbie snorts. “Like he can talk. Is Isabel still around?”

“Not since before the thing with Willy Bank,” Danny says. “Too much heat, it was getting complicated. Rusty’s going to join her on vacation in a few weeks.”

“Uh huh,” Debbie says, bland as mayonnaise. 

She’s never been entirely sure how that relationship works. The separate parts of it, sure: Danny and Tess, solid under the one condition that Danny never lie to her about anything ever again; Danny and Rusty, living in each other’s pockets and finishing each other’s sentences; Rusty and Isabel, sometimes long-distance and sometimes not, making it work with the determination Isabel brings to saving the world and the stubbornness Rusty hides under an easygoing veneer. Even Rusty and Tess, who have their own comfortable dynamic that developed first out of necessity and then out of fondness. 

But Isabel is not someone Danny found and drew in; she met Rusty when Danny was in the clink, and his only importance to the origin of their relationship is in his absence. He’s not part of it. And somewhere inside Danny is still the ten year old kid who pilfered half the stock of FAO Schwartz for Debbie — not so she’d have new toys, but so she’d stop stealing his.

He doesn’t share well, her brother. It has something to do with the way he thinks of himself as the center of the universe.

“What is that ‘uh huh,’ what is that supposed to mean—”

“It’s an ‘uh huh,’ Danny, I was acknowledging what you said. Surely you’ve heard of active listening, after all these years.” 

“There was—”

“Or maybe you haven’t, no surprise there.”

“There was a tone.”

“Was there?” Debbie asks, and smiles.

Of course, somewhere deep inside Debbie is the seven year old girl who switched out all the toys in Danny’s toy box with replicas. It took the better part of six months and as much money as she could scrounge up, but Debbie’s willing to sacrifice a little for a good cause. They’re thieves; everything is better when it used to belong to someone else.

Plus, Danny had spilled jam on her favorite sweater and she was a little pissed. No matter how much she cleaned it, it was always faintly sticky after that.

“You’re a brat,” Danny says. “Remind me how we’re related again?”

“You know, I was wondering the same thing after the shit you pulled on that last job,” Debbie says sweetly. “I guess I just inherited both our shares of the brains in the family.”

“Sorry, which one of us is stuck in New Jersey and which one of us is sitting by a beach with millions of dollars?” Danny asks, light and smug. Debbie scowls. Knowing she set herself up for that one doesn’t make it better. “How’s Uncle Bernie, anyway?”

“Gout’s acting up. He says you should call more often.”

“We’ll have to arrange a family reunion.”

“Sure, pick a nice non-extradition country and we’ll make it happen,” she says. “Something with a nice coastline, for Lou. And enough snacks for Rusty, I know how he complains when you don’t feed him enough. Honestly, Danny, it’s as if you want him to get low blood sugar.”

“Are you backseat driving my partnership?” Danny asks, his voice wavering the way it does when he’s a little annoyed and amused at the same time. Everything with Danny comes out a little amused, like he’s always in on the joke even if you aren’t; it used to drive Debbie nuts after he picked that up, until she realised that driving people nuts was exactly the point and she had to stop for the good of his ego. Besides, when it comes to Danny she’s always the one laughing last, because she’s the one with the family photo albums stashed away in three different locations. She’s considered sending Rusty and Tess select images but wanted to save it for a really special occasion. “This is why we can never work together.”

He’s not wrong, really. Danny is too much of an older brother to listen to Debbie and Debbie is too smart to listen to Danny.

“We never work together because you’d never let me actually do my job and I’d strangle you in three days, just like I’m going to strangle you the next time I see you,” she says. “Plus last time we met you tried to poach Lou, _again_.”

“What, are you worried that one of these days she’s going to say yes?”

Debbie snorts, which is all the response that one deserves. Lou and Danny have a perfectly friendly long-standing relationship premised on the fact that Lou has no time for Danny and he knows it, despite his elaborate job offers. The only exception is if Danny is telling childhood stories about Debbie, at which point Lou will immediately show up as if summoned and listen with deep concentration and a tiny smile. “Please. You should be worried that one of these days she’s going to run away with your wife.”

Lou and Tess have gotten along like gangbusters since Danny’s first wedding. Any time they’re in the same room, they invariably end up continuing a conversation about the Romantics and Cubism that has been going on for years and only gotten more flirtatious with time. Of Danny’s tangle of overlapping relationships, though, the only one Lou actively keeps in touch with is Rusty; Lou refers to it as “keeping track of everyone” but Debbie privately calls it what it is: gossiping about old friends in the business and potential new talents. They’re two of the worst busybodies she knows.

“Tess would never run off with someone who thinks Picasso is overrated,” Danny says. “Besides, Lou would never run off without you in tow, and I know all your weaknesses.”

“Maybe you just think you do,” Debbie says absently, but she’s thinking about it — running off with Lou, somewhere beyond the watchful eyes of, oh, everyone. 

It would have to be somewhere good, because Debbie’s been pretty much ignored as long as she stays in the tri-state area, but any big trip would raise some eyebrows on both sides of the law, and in any case Debbie burned through a chunk of her emergency funds in the aftermath of the Scholz job.

Besides, going someplace just to go would solve her immediate problem — New Jersey — but not her real problem, which is boredom. It would just be doing a whole lot of nothing with a different view.

But Lou could do it, if she wanted. She’s not related to any flashy assholes who make enemies like breathing, and she doesn’t mind a little solitude as long as she’s not trapped in it; she can go anywhere she wants. She could take her bike down a new road and never come back. She wouldn’t, probably, but she could.

Debbie’s just as greedy as her brother, really. Runs in the family.

“Hey,” Danny says, a little softer but still faintly, faintly amused, because he’s always amused, because he’s an asshole. “Are you okay?”

“Don’t get sappy on me now, big brother,” Debbie says. “I’m not going to call off that hit I put on you.” 

Danny snorts. “Please, we both know you’d murder me yourself.” 

Debbie hums in agreement. “Never trust a middleman. Pretty sure that’s what got you arrested in the first place.”

“Ouch,” Danny says wryly. “Do you feel better now?”

She considers it for a moment. “No, but I don’t feel worse.”

She can’t actually hear him roll his eyes, but she’s pretty sure she can feel it through the phone line. “We can’t have that.”

There’s a beat of silence. Debbie cracks her neck absently and listens to the faint hum of the phone line and the sounds of traffic in the distance. She thinks about bingo.

“Shouldn’t be too much longer,” Danny says, his form of an olive branch. “We diverted as much attention as we could. No police.” 

“Yeah, I know,” Debbie sighs.

“You got any plans?”

“I got plans for that watch,” Debbie says, scoffing. Danny stole it back from her before the Scholz job, and between that and the kerfuffle with Willy Bank and being stuck in New Jersey while Danny fucks off to warmer climes, she hasn’t been able to get it back yet.

Danny scoffs right back. “I’d like to see you try.”

“You know, you said that last time and as I recall, you didn’t see anything at all when I took it.”

“I let you take it,” Danny says. He’s still as bad at lying to Debbie now as he was when he was a teenager trying to pretend he hadn’t stolen her Halloween candy.

Debbie rolls her eyes. “Uh huh.”

“Come on,” Danny says: a change in subject, which might as well be an admission of defeat in the language of the Oceans. “What next? You going to take your bingo cards to Scarsdale?”

“God forbid.” Debbie leans back, listening to the honking in the distance get a little louder — a traffic jam, probably. But traffic means cars and even buses and trains, and all of those things mean roads, and roads mean somewhere to go that’s not Passaic goddamn County. “People go from New Jersey to New York every day. It’s a nice place, New York.”

“Lot of culture there,” Danny says lightly. “Museums. Theater. Fashion. Art.”

“Art,” Debbie agrees. That’s the one good thing about her overgrown pest of a brother: he knows what she means even when she’s barely started to think it. “Lots of opportunities.”

“They do say if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”

“They do say that, don’t they,” Debbie murmurs.

Danny chuckles. “Talk soon, Deb. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Oh, Danny,” Debbie says. “You know I always do it better.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was scrolling through Ocean's 8 yuletide leters and was super happy that one of the prompts in your letter was for something more focused on Debbie and Danny's relationship, because I've spent a lot of time thinking about what a hilarious siblinghood that must be(/have been, if we're assuming that Danny actually did die, which I 100% do not believe). Also, why would Debbie — a woman with the vision, the connections, the know-how, and the sheer chutzpah to rob the Met in the middle of the Met Gala — have been stuck running miniature-scale bingo cons? Presumably because she had a little bad luck and then her show-off of a big brother was out there stealing from angry casino owners and turning the heat up on the rest of the family. Brothers, honestly.


End file.
